The invention relates generally to methods and apparatus for displaying electronic documents. More particularly, the invention relates to methods and apparatus for providing user access to help and settings features in a system for viewing electronic documents.
As computers have become smaller and more powerful, there have been recent efforts to provide portable, hand-held computers for rendering electronic content in a manner that is similar or identical to the way content is presented in a printed book. Thus, much effort has focused on providing a user interface for computers which fosters an immersive reading experience, or the sensation of being xe2x80x9clostxe2x80x9d in the electronic document.
One primary advantage that computers offer over printed books as a means for presenting content to users is that computers have the potential to enhance the functionality of the rendered book. For example, computers have the potential to provide help functions for guiding or teaching a user about the computer and the electronic document being rendered. Similarly, computers have the potential to provide for access to settings controls for activating or deactivating additional features.
However, providing a user access to this functionality without interfering with the immersive reading experience presents a challenge. Moreover, many state-of-the-art viewing systems provide a single page or single-window viewing environment which complicates the task of providing help and settings control features and other functionality to users. Accordingly, it would be advantageous to provide a user interface which offers a user access to help features and settings controls and is usable in a single page or single window viewing environment, yet which maintains conditions that foster an immersive reading experience.
The present invention addresses the aforementioned problems by providing an apparatus and method for presenting integrated help features and settings controls in a single book-formatted electronic document. The single electronic document can be accessed easily by a user by selection of an appropriate control with a user selection device. Since the help and control settings are integrated into a single document, the user need not navigate through more than one document in order to access help features and control settings. Moreover, since the help and settings control document is book-formatted, navigation follows the familiar paradigm of a printed book, adding to the user""s immersive reading experience and permitting access to help features and control settings in a single-page or single-window viewing environment.
The present invention also provides for automatic or xe2x80x9csmartxe2x80x9d navigation to the most logical part of the book-formatted help and settings control document based on predicted user needs at the time the help and settings control document is accessed. The target area or chapter of the help and settings control document is determined by monitoring a number of different criteria, including the context of the originating document from which the help settings document is invoked, user profiles, navigation history. The invention also contemplates a xe2x80x9clearningxe2x80x9d capability in order to determine if a predicted target area or chapter of the help and settings control document is actually the one that the user sought.
The invention is particularly applicable to user interface architectures such as those described commonly assigned U.S. patent application Ser. No. 09/456249, entitled xe2x80x9cComputer User Interface Architecture Wherein Users Interact With Both Content And User Interface By Activating Linksxe2x80x9d and filed contemporaneously with this application. The subject matter of that application is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety.